


Tale of two monsters

by Unbreakable_Vow



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Alternative Universe - Albus and Gellert never parted ways, Ariana Dumbledore Lives, F/F, F/M, Family Bonding, Family Dynamics, Gen, Good Gellert Grindelwald, M/M, POV Multiple, the main focus is family
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:34:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25107052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unbreakable_Vow/pseuds/Unbreakable_Vow
Summary: It takes one monster to know another. It takes much more to start a family.
Relationships: Aberforth Dumbledore & Albus Dumbledore & Ariana Dumbledore & Gellert Grindelwald, Aberforth Dumbledore/Minerva McGonagall, Albus Dumbledore/Gellert Grindelwald, Ariana Dumbledore/Vinda Rosier, Credence Barebone & Ariana Dumbledore, Credence Barebone/Nagini
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15





	Tale of two monsters

**Author's Note:**

> I'm posting this first chapter just to see if someone is interested in the idea, because it's a story I want to invest some of my headcanons in but I've already two other wips that are currently taking all my time. So let me know what you think.
> 
> Also, english is not my first language. If someone wants to beta, I would be very happy :)

Director Percival Graves looks up from his desk when he hears the door of his office open, and it’s with a slight nod that he welcomes the new arrival. “Hello, Gellert. It’s good to see you.”

“Likewise,” Gellert Grindelwald, Headmaster of Hogwarts, says to Percival in return. 

He’s used to see the man by now. He’s more often than not called for consulting in particular bad cases by the Auror, and especially the MACUSA has taken to consult him quite often, after he helped them in the greatest breach of the Statute of Secrecy America has ever had, that happened in New York two years ago. 

If someone had asked Gellert Grindelwald when he was a boy if he would ever See this future for him he would have laughed in their face. In his plans and visions there was only war for freedom, against the non-magicals and whoever opposed him in the wizarding world. But meeting Albus - and, against his own mind, falling completely and utterly in love with him- has prevented that future to pass, and has created a whole new destiny in which the revolution is to be had with Albus by his side, and in a less violent way compared to the one he had envisioned when he was a teenager.

Indeed, he and Albus are already to the point where, with the collaboration of the other Ministers in the magical world, cities for both magical and non-magical people to live together peacefully have been created. It’s a start, but he’s sure that, upon seeing that the two worlds can indeed live together like it had been centuries ago, the whole magical community would slowly give in to the idea to not hide anymore. 

It hadn’t been easy in the beginning to convince the other Ministers to create cities without the Statute, but his beloved husband, as the british Minister of Magic, had been very persuasive. Gellert has always admired this quality in him, and it pains him to admit that in that regard Albus is way better than he could ever be. _Leave to me the diplomacy, you’re better suited for action,_ he’d said to him when they first started planning their _hushed_ revolution - something that, at the time, Gellert had not thought possible, but he’d trusted Albus, and now he has to admit that his lover was right all along - and Gellert had accepted, becoming the Headmaster of Hogwarts and making a name for himself for being a good Headmaster and the best Auror the wizarding world could’ve ever hope for, had he chosen that path for himself.

It’s this that had lead him to New York two years before, when an Obscurial had destroyed the non magical subway of New York in the middle of the day, killing many non magical people in the process. Gellert, and a team of Aurors lead by Percival Graves, had in the end been able to corner the boy, a scrawny kid of almost twenty, who’d told them he was named Credence and that had been abused by his adoptive mother for being magical. 

The boy, upon hearing that his Obscurus had killed at least two dozens people, had lost whatever hold he had on his Obscurus. It had gone out from his body with pure rage, no doubt fed by the guilt the boy felt, and it had exploded taking the boy’s life, and many of the aurors’ that where there with it. Gellert had been shocked by that violence, but it had been the starting point for America to concede that Albus’ policy could be right, and to create a little village just outside New York with a select group of wizards and non magical people to live together. Village in which a previous student of his and Albus when they were still teachers, Newt Scamander, had gone living, and in which he had met his fianceé Tina Goldstein - Percival Graves’ second in command. Her sister, Queenie, had been the first witch in America to marry a non magical person, Jacob Kowalski. The wedding of Queenie Goldstein and Jacob Kowalski, followed by any wizard newspaper in the world, had been a grounding moment for their cause, and they had both participated in it and given the new couple all their blessing.

Gellert thinks that that’s why he’s here, to hear some reports from the village, since they’ve been the ones to suggest it in the first place. There have not been any major crimes in America lately, he reasons, so MACUSA would have no other reason to contact him.

But he’s wrong.

“Thank you for coming on such a short notice,” Percival adds when he gesture for him to take a seat.

“It was no trouble at all. What is it?”

Percival expression becomes more sour, making Gellert worry. “It’s Credence Barebone, the Obscurial. He’s alive.”

“Alive?” asks Gellert shocked. “How’s that possible? We saw him disintegrate. I remember it vividly.”

“So do I, but there’s no mistaking the boy. One of our Aurors has seen him in Paris, a performer in the Circus Arcana.”

“What? How did he end up there?”

“I have no idea,” Percival says, a tired expression on his face, and Gellert can’t help feeling the same way, the news at the same time shocking and sad.

He remembers how he blamed himself for some time after the boy’s death, and not even his husband, Aberforth or Ariana’s words could console him. _I felt bad for a long time,_ Ariana had said to him when he went talking to her _. But it wasn’t my fault. It was that monster that killed my mum._

Hearing of him now makes Gellert’s feelings resurface after a long time, with them many questions he has yet not answers for.

Questions that, apparently, Percival has too. “How’s that possible, Gellert? The boy was a miracle even when we met him, being twenty and still alive. Almost all Obscurials are already dead by that age. The only known Obscurial to reach adulthood is -”

“My sister,” Gellert concludes. “And even she had received help from me and Albus after making it to fifteen.”

“Yes, I know,” Percival says. “The boy is twenty-one now. Not to mention, we’ve seen him _die_. How can he be still alive?”

“I have no answers for you,” Gellert says sorrowful. “But he needs help. We can’t let him go unsupervised. He’s killed people. We have to stop him.”

“I agree, but it’s clear that doing what we did that day is not the right approach,” Percival says. “So I’ve been thinking. Could you ask your sister to help? Let only her go to talk to the boy. They’re... the same, after all.”

“Ariana?” Gellert asks surprised. His sister is the current COMC teacher at Hogwarts, and even if he doesn’t doubt her skills, this is surely a strange request. “She’s a civilian.”

“With all due respect, _Headmaster_ , so are you,” Percival says, and Gellert has to concede the point.

“I just worry about her,” he says instead. “Surely you understand, having a little sister yourself.”

“I do, but if your sister is anything like my Emily, I’m sure that she would like to choose for herself if this mission is too dangerous for her.”

 _He’s very good,_ Gellert thinks, not for the first time. The man has a way with words as much as he has with actions. It’s not wonder why he’s only second by the President herself, a very proud and capable woman. “You’re right,” he concedes. “I’ll talk with her and she’ll let you know.”

“Splendid,” Percival says. “If she accepts, we’ll organize an operation with the French ministry. It goes under their jurisdiction, but since the boy is american, we have a say to how to conduct the operation.”

“Alright,” Gellert says, not liking the idea at all, and it’s pretty sure that not even Albus will be happy with it. “If that’s all, I’ll better return to my duties.”

“Of course, I won’t hold you any longer,” Percival says sitting up, and Gellert does the same. “Until next time then, Headmaster. Thank you for your cooperation.”

“Until next time, Director,” Gellert says, and it’s with his head full of questions that he goes back to school.

***

Auror Rosier is absolutely stunning.

Ariana can’t help it: she stares. The woman has literally no flaws: porcelain skin, dark and luscious hair, clear eyes, red lips and rosy cheeks. A slender figure wrapped in dark green, a grey hat that puts her hair in an elegant updo style, and the air of a dangerous person you shouldn’t be messing with.

 _She’s the Head of Bureau_ _de la Justice Magique, for Merlin’s sake, stop staring,_ Ariana chastises herself, but it takes her another moment before she can really pay attention to what her assistant Abernathy is saying to her.

“You’ll ask Skender to talk to the boy after the show,” he says, but Ariana, unfortunately, doesn’t know who Skender is, even if she has the hunch that he’s already told her before. Mortified, she asks as much.

“I told you, he’s the owner of the Circus,” Abernathy answers, visibly annoyed, confirming her suspicious. Ariana feels shame for not having listened to him, too busy staring at that beautiful woman a few feet from her.

It almost never happens to her. Her childhood and teenager years had been spent in isolation from the world, and after that she hadn’t really start to pay attention to other people in _that_ way after she’d be more than twenty-five. But even then, she’d been sometimes too afraid, or not brave enough, to try to approach the girls who sparked some interest in her, so in the end she had resign herself to just dismiss those impulses of love and attraction.

Even now, looking at Vinda Rosier, she knows she won’t say a word. Besides, she’s pretty sure that even if the Auror fancies other women, she wouldn’t find Ariana to be interesting at all. She’s indeed pretty plain. Apart from her voluminous light red hair and blue eyes, she’s pretty pale, with an anonymous face and no other qualities. She doesn’t wear makeup, she’s not graceful, and, as her brothers have told her many times, she still interacts with strangers like she’s afraid of them. Which is, well, not far from the truth.

“Don’t be rude, Abernathy,” the object of her thoughts says, making her way towards them. “It’s her first operation.”

She’s saying it with a calm voice, but there’s no mistaking the warning in it. Abernathy lowers his head nodding, and Vinda addresses her directly. “In anything goes wrong, take this,” she says, giving her a gold pin. “Touch it with your wand, a team of us will come to your location.”

“Thank you,” she answers. “Let’s hope it will not come to that.”

“I agree. But in that case, we’ll be ready. Don’t be afraid: we won’t let any harm come to you.”

She mustn’t misunderstand that words for what they aren’t: it’s the woman’s duty to protect the wizarding world, so of course she’s trying to reassure her. Not to mention, if the operation goes wrong, the fault would for sure fall on her shoulders, so she’s trying to prevent anything bad to happen.

But they still make Ariana’s inside squirm in delight. _Fool that I am,_ she thinks sorrowful, nodding at her.

“Ok, everyone, let’s begin,” Vinda says, and with a final nod Ariana enters the Circus Arcana as a spectator of the show, in order to find Credence Barebone.

The show itself is beautiful, even if the undeniable cruelty towards the creatures makes her want to tear everyone apart. She has to stop her Obscurus to go out and make a slaughter every few minutes, and by the time the number with the Maledictus is finished - _Poor girl,_ she thinks sadly, _condemned to hell, like the rest of us_ \- she feels already tired.

“And now a treat for you, ladies and gentlemen! Let’s do a big applause for Shadow Boy!”

Ariana has seen his brother’s memories of the boy, so there’s no mistaking who’s entering the stage right now. He looks a little more wild, his hair shorter and a five o’ clock shadow on his cheeks and jaw, but his eyes are just haunted as she’s seen in the memories, if not more. He looks afraid, like he’s facing something traumatic, and it’s because she’s seen that look on her own face too many times that she knows what’s going to happen.

He’s going to release his Obscurus.

 _Is he out of his mind?_ She thinks terrified. _It’s going to kill everyone!_

She almost goes to touch the pin, but she doesn’t want the whole operation to be a waste of time because she was wrong on her intuition. She decides to wait, and to intervene herself if things go too much sour.

But what she fears happens: the boy, Credence, aims the palm of his right hand to the ceiling of the circus, and, in front of their eyes, a rivulet of black smoke starts to go up from the palm.

Ariana has only the time to think _I’m going to die,_ hand going to take the wand, that the boy’s hand closed, and the rivulet, which is slowing ascending, starts to spin in every direction, designing circles and doodles on his movement all around the boy.

_What?_

Ariana watches, shocked, as what is surely _part_ of the Obscurus continues to rotate all around the boy in which is… there’s no other way to describe it, a _playful_ way. She’s absurdly reminded of her little Golden Snidget everytime she lets him going around in Hogwarts, how when he’s free he first goes flying around her and makes her laugh.

 _It’s impossible,_ she thinks, looking at the boy doing the incredible. _There’s no way he’s doing that._

But, to her growing astonishment, more rivulets go out from the boy’s body, and all dance around him making him almost disappear. And it’s really a dance, for they’re not trying to destruct each other, but they’re rotating in circular movements that never make one go against the other, like they’re coordinating a dance together.

All of a sudden, they soar up like a swarm, then separate, going in every direction. They go to the audience and flip and fly, never hurting anybody, and when one goes near her face her own Obscurus almost takes the upper hand on her, trying to go out and meet the other, something _familiar_ calling it to the surface.

By the time that rivulet has gone away, Ariana is almost on the verge of crying, so much had hurt her controlling her own Obscurus. How can the boy have a so tight control over it? He doesn’t even seem tired at all, and indeed, his expression is of absolutely calm, like he’s succeeded in his intent.

 _How? How?_ is what she’s asking herself repeatedly, but before she can work herself into a panic the boy suddenly raise his arms to the sky, and closes his eyes, and the rivulets all going towards him and _inside_ him again. The process seems painful, and yet the boy’s face doesn’t betray anything, only a slightly pained expression. By the time all of his Obscurus is inside him again, he opens his eyes and bows, the whole circus _explodes_ with a thunderous applause. 

But Ariana is too much shocked to applaud.

 _He controls it,_ she thinks, and it’s so absurd that she still can’t believe it, even if she’s seen it with her own eyes. _It’s impossible. It had taken years for me to not let it take control over me, and many of Fawkes’ tears to keep me alive until I could. Even now I need them every once in a while. And even now there’s no way I would be able to let parts of it go and… dance? What’s going on?_ **_Who_ ** _is this boy?_

By the time she becomes aware again of her surroundings, the show has come to an end, and many people are going out of the Circus. She has to run if she wants a chance to speak to the boy, she can’t let her own emotion stop her from succeeding in her mission.

So it’s with a racing heart that she goes to talk to Skender.

***

Nagini doesn’t know what to make of this strange woman, who has asked to talk with Credence and who’s now looking at him like she can’t believe he’s in front of her.

Credence is visibly nervous, that much she can tell. In the year they’ve known each other she’s learnt to guess his emotions from subtly expression of his face and his body, since he’s painfully closed up in talking about them. Even now he has not said a word, just beared the woman’s scrutiny without even once lamenting anything.

If she were another person - or better, if she were the girl she had been once - Nagini would intervene and demand the woman to speak and then to leave them alone. She’s always been timid, but much protective of the people she cares about.

But that was before Skender and his circus, before leaving his family forever four years ago. Before knowing that her own family had sold her to the European man without her even having a say in what was going to happen, and all because she’d started to show symptoms of the curse many women in her family had faced before. 

She, as her own aunt before her, and her grandmother’s sister, is a Maledictus. It’s rare nowadays in her native land, but once had been a curse spread vastly in the nation. No one knows where it comes from. Some say it’s because a woman by the name of Bawang Merah had angered the king Vasuki denying herself to him, and he had put the curse on any woman from her descendancy, where others says it’s because an unnamed man had angered Vishnu and the god had taken revenge on the man’s wife, who’d had many children before becoming a snake permanently.

Whatever the case, it was a curse that couldn’t be broken. It had taken killing every woman who showed symptoms to stop the the curse altogether, for it couldn’t be transmitted by anything else apart family lineage. One of her ancestors had avoided persecution and had been tricked by a man into giving him children, and from there her lineage had come, one of the few remaining in her homeland to still carry the curse.

Her own family members had been killed, so in a way she’s glad to her family to have let her escape, instead of facing execution. But their betrayal still hurts, four years later, and Credence had been the first person she’s genuinely taken an interest with, and it’s to date the only friend she has.

Even if their relationship is slowly becoming more than that, which frightens her as much as excited her. When she was young she dreamed of a caring and gentle husband, one who would look at her like she was the sun. Credence is not exactly like her dream man - first of all, because he’s European - but she’s sure that her younger self would approve or her choice, and even if she hates to think so, she’s sure that even her family would be happy of him.

She’s distracted from her musings when the woman starts to talk to him.

“I’m… I’m terribly sorry. I just - it’s difficult. I’m… my name is Ariana. I’m - I’m like you.”

“I know,” Credence answers. “I can feel it. You have an Obscurus too.”

That takes Nagini by surprise. She remembers vividly Credence say to her, the first time she saw his Obscurus going free, _Wizards and witches who have it die young, I’m the only exception._ His eyes had been more haunted that they are now, and Nagini hopes that some of it had been because of her, because Credence had for the first time of his life someone who loved and cared about him. 

Someone who wasn’t afraid.

 _They all die young,_ she thinks now, and yet there’s a woman here, a forty years old taken or granted a few years, who’s an Obscurial as well. _What’s going on?_

“Yes,” the woman says. “I can feel yours too. During the performance, mine - it wanted to go out. It took everything that I had to stop it.”

“I’m sorry,” he answers, a sad expression on his face. “I didn’t mean to cause anyone pain.”

“That’s it, tough. How? Releasing it does bring always destruction. How do you control it?”

“Don’t you?” he asks. “You’re… pardon me the word, madam, _old_. Isn’t that how you managed to live past childhood? By controlling it?”

“Not in the way you do,” the woman, Ariana, answers. “If I did what you did today, it would kill everyone. I only keep it inside.”

“If it was just that, it would’ve killed you years ago,” Credence says. “It’s keeping it inside that kills us.”

“And it’s letting it go out that kills everyone else.”

“Not always. I’m the proof of that.”

“I want to know how,” she says resolutely. “Help me, please.”

“Madam, I’m not sure I can,” he says truthfully, and Nagini sees his distress in saying those words. “You obviously hate it. The first step is accepting it as a part of you.”

And now Nagini gets why Credence has been distressed: he must have known what his words would have caused, because the woman’s face screws up like she’s just listened to something horrible.

“A part of me? _That monster?_ ”

“I used to think about it in the same way,” he answers. “And that’s why it was killing me. You have to accept it. Even if it’s not easy.”

“ _It has taken over my entire life!”_ she shrieks. “My mother, my chance at a normal life -”

“And it always will if you continue to let it!” Credence says, in a more raised voice, and neither of them notices that, around them, rivulets of black smoke are slowly rising.

“Enough!” Nagini yells, before the worst can happen. “This is getting out of control!”

Both Ariana and Credence look at her, like they had forgotten she was still there. Slowly, in front of her eyes, their Obscurus subsided, and both look at each other with a pained expression.

“Forgive me,” the woman says, a pained expression on her face. “I didn’t mean to lose control. Merlin, I feel like a child. I’m sorry. It’s just… a difficult concept to grasp. It killed my mum when I was young.”

“ _I_ killed more than thirty people two years ago,” he says. “It’s not the same, but it hadn’t been easy for me either. But I’ve managed it.”

“I’ve seen it,” she says. Then she takes a deep breath, like she’s preparing for the worse. “I’ve to tell you the truth. I’m here on behalf of the Ministry. They thought I had a chance to convince you to turn yourself in, since I’m… like you. There’s a team of Aurors outside ready to take you in at my signal.”

 _They’ll take Credence away,_ Nagini thinks, and in the next moment she puts herself in front of Credence, the snakes in her that wants to put her fangs in that woman’s throat. “Go away,” she hisses.

“I’m not going to do it!” she says. “That was my intention, but you… you’re not a threat. I daresay that I’m more dangerous than you are. I’ll vouch for you. Just… please, help me control it as you do. That’s all I ask.”

“Thank you for that,” Credence says. “I know that I deserve it, to turn myself for what I’ve done.”

“It's not true,” Nagini says, looking at Credence at the verge of crying. _You’re not wrong,_ she wants to say, _nothing about you is wrong._

“Don’t worry Naga,” Credence says to her, smiling and taking her hand. “it’s alright. And Ariana, I will help you,” he adds, looking at the woman. “But you’ll need to stay with us.”

“Or you could… come with me,” she says tentatively. “I live in Scotland. I’m a teacher at a magical school. You could live in my house, if that’s what you want. You wouldn’t want for nothing. Just for the period it takes me to learn. What do you say?”

“Do you want to leave us?” Nagini asks in a whisper, the real question _Do you want to leave me?_ hidden in her words. _Don’t leave me,_ is all that she can think, _when I have so little left to live. Stay with me until the end._

“I will never leave you,” Credence says to her, and the solemnity in his voice takes her breath away. “I know what we have is still new, but… Naga, you’re the first person I’ve ever loved. Come with me. Aren’t you tired to be here?”

“Leave? The circus?” 

“Yes. You’ve been here for years now. Don’t you want to go away?”

 _It’s the only home I have,_ she almost says, before looking at Credence and realizing that it’s not true anymore. Credence is her home, now: wherever he is, she’ll feel that place her home too. It scares her more than she can admit that he has taken her heart so completely that she feels lost without him, but it’s the truth.

“Ok,” she says in the end. “If you want to go, then we’ll go. But we need to convince Skender to let us go.”

“I’m sure Ariana’s friend can persuade him,” Credence says, looking at the woman. “Is that right?”

“We’ll leave them no other choices,” she says with a smile. “Credence… thank you. You don’t know how much that means for me.”

“I think I can imagine,” he says ironically, and the woman laughs, and her face changes completely: she’s radiant, her long red hair dancing in the air and eyes full of mirth.

Still, Nagini can’t help but worry.

**Author's Note:**

> The characters ages are:  
> Ariana (37),  
> Minerva (35),  
> Nagini (19),  
> Aurelius (21),  
> Albus (43),  
> Gellert (41),  
> Aberforth (41),  
> Vinda (34)


End file.
